Hellraiser: Deader

A reporter sent to Bucharest to investigate a cult finds herself pulled into Pinhead's world in the seventh Hellraiser film.

For more about Hellraiser: Deader and the Hellraiser: Deader Blu-ray release, see Hellraiser: Deader Blu-ray Review published by Michael Reuben on April 5, 2013 where this Blu-ray release scored 2.5 out of 5.

Hellraiser: Deader Blu-ray Review

Dead End

The Hellraiser films have been steadily losing steam ever
since Clive Barker's original, which introduced the iconic demon known as "Pinhead". A fan of my acquaintance maintains that
the decline began immediately with the first sequel, Hellbound, when Pinhead talked too much;
he was more frightening when he simply appeared and inflicted unimaginable pain. For me, the
series sputtered with the third film, Hell on Earth, which expected the viewer to keep a straight
face while Pinhead's alter ego, Captain Elliot Spencer, solemnly declaimed about his and
Pinhead's "domains". Spirits with clearly defined territories are neither mysterious nor spine-tingling; they're just landlords in dispute.
But no matter at what point one wearied of Pinhead and his Cenobites, Hellraiser had clearly
jumped the shark when Miramax's Dimension label (the same folks who brought us the Scream
franchise) began merrily writing them into random horror scripts, just to squeeze out a few drops
of blood and a couple more shekels from an exhausted franchise. The fifth, sixth and seventh
chapters of the series were created in this fashion, the last being Hellraiser: Deader. The film
began with an original script by Neal Marshall Stevens a/k/a Benjamin Carr (Thir13en Ghosts)
that might have made an intriguingly atmospheric horror film if it had been given a chance. But
Dimension handed it off to a former former best boy grip named Tim Day with aspirations to
become a writer. By the time Day had finished shoehorning Pinhead and his signature puzzle box
into the mix, the result was a confusing mess that never makes sense, despite the efforts of a
decent cast, a talented, mostly Romanian crew, and a capable director, Rick Bota, who learned
his craft working as a cinematographer on Tales from the Crypt and House on Haunted Hill,
among others. They give more value for money than Day's hatchet job deserves.

HR: Deader has a promisingly Se7en-ish
opening in a London crack den. A heedless
investigative reporter, Amy Klein (Kari Wuhrer), is there collecting material for an exposé.
When she shows what she has to her vaguely Mephistophelian editor, Charles (Simon Kunz), he
tells her to put it aside and plays her a videotape he's been sent from Bucharest. The tape appears
to show a young woman willingly committing suicide so that she can be resurrected by a guru
named Winter (Paul Rhys). It's the most concrete evidence seen to date of a rumored cult known
as "deaders". Charles dispatches Amy to Bucharest to investigate.
When Amy finds the apartment where the videotape was shot, it reeks of death and decay. Empty
except for a corpse, the apartment contains numerous indications that Winter and his followers
have been there. It also holds one of the puzzle boxes (known in the Hellraiser mythology as a
"Lermarchand box" after its toymaker-designer) that is the key to summoning Pinhead (Doug
Bradley) and the Cenobites.
From this point on, HR: Deader is little more than a series of spooky encounters with ghostly
figures and paranormal phenomena that are increasingly terrifying (for Amy) and bewildering
(for us). The patchwork script leans heavily on the tired device of ending a nightmarish situation
by having Amy wake up screaming in a place of apparent safety that we know, with the certainty
of dream-within-a-dream logic, will shortly turn sinister. Even Joey (Marc Warren), the anti-Winter cult leader from whom Amy seeks assistance,
probably isn't what he seems. How can you
trust someone who lives in the last car of a Romanian subway train with the windows all
covered, surrounding by quivering naked flesh, self-mutilated bodies, heavy drug use and art that
seems alive? As Joey eventually tells Amy, they share the same problem, which is that they never
know when to quit. (Joey's wording is more colorful.)
One can see in HR: Deader the outlines of Stevens' original story, which must have involved an
effort by Winters to draw Amy into his circle and her struggle to resist. With Bota's direction and
the moody photography and production design, that movie might have been genuinely creepy.
But the effort to work the Pinhead mythology into the mix is so obviously labored that any
illusion is destroyed. Winter is said to a "descendant" of Lemarchand and therefore the puzzle
box's rightful owner, but for some reason he needs Amy to open it. (Why? Beats me.)
Some sort of battle is being waged between Winter and Pinhead for control of Pinhead's
"domain" (there's that word again), but how Winter hopes to gain control of hell is unclear (yes,
hell; isn't that supposed to be Pinhead's "domain"?). Whatever the outcome, it appears that Amy
will be the loser. She can either be Pinhead's creature or Winter's. Then again, the final dream
sequence before the big showdown suggests a strange form of "escape" in which a younger
version of Amy executes her older self. These are the options?
Still, it's a Hellraiser film. Fans will wait a long time if they can be certain that eventually
Pinhead will appear and rip people apart with chains. Rest assured that he does. It's just that now
he feels like a guest performer crashing someone else's gig. Wait a second—wasn't Amy sent to
Budapest so that she could figure out how Winter was managing to resurrect people in the first
place? And didn't Pinhead say he has nothing to do with that part of the story?
Oh, never mind.

In the extras, director Bota discusses the cinematography of Hellraiser: Deader, which was shot
by Romanian cinematographer Vivi Dragan Vasile in a dark and atmospheric style that is well
represented on Echo Bridge's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. Vasile's generally cold palette is
dominated by blues, greys and whites, and his blacks are deep and solid. Sterile environments
like the Bucharest subway have the appearance of a morgue, and messy ones like the crackhouse
in the opening, the deader apartment and Joey's subway car resemble a charnel house. Because
the image is dark, detail doesn't "pop" off the screen, but it's good, if you look closely, even in
shadowed areas (assuming they haven't been deliberately cast into darkness). There's a visible
grain pattern, and although the image is somewhat soft, it doesn't appear that any detail has been
stripped.
Echo Bridge has mastered the 88-minute film on a BD-50 to accommodate the extras, but they
haven't taken full advantage of the space. The bitrate is 21.12 Mbps, which is adequate but
nothing special, and there is substantial unused space on the disc. Why pay for the larger capacity
if you're not going to use it? Still, compression artifacts were not in evidence.

The DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack provides a functionally atmospheric mix with such classically
disturbing effects as dripping water, flies buzzing and voices murmuring for an appropriate sense
of unease. Still, the soundtrack's most effective moments are the old-fashioned cuts from the
tense and noisy climax of a scary scene to the relative quiet of "awakening" in a safe place. The
sound mix does this so often that it gets old (but then again, so does the script). Pinhead's grand
guignol finale has suitable icky sound effects to match its onscreen gore. Heinrich Lohner, who
did BloodRayne the same year, provided the score, which occasionally quotes the original
Hellraiser score by Christopher Young.
For some reason, Echo Bridge has included a DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo track as well. I can't
imagine why anyone would select it.

In a rare departure for Echo Bridge, the Blu-ray of Hellraiser: Deader includes an array of
special features. It does not, however, contain either of the commentaries included on the 2005
Disney DVD, or the commentary on the deleted scenes. There are also reports of a short film
called "No More Souls", which was a hidden feature on the earlier DVD. If it's hidden on the
Blu-ray, I could not find it.

Deleted/Extended Scenes (480i; 1.78:1, non-enhanced; 25:46): The scenes are not listed
separately. The titles and descriptions below are from the Blu-ray but have been edited to
remove spoilers.

Untitled (Marla's tape)

"I Can't Come Home"—Amy talks to Charles on phone

"Angel, Devil"—Meeting Joey in the Train

"Cab Ride"—Getting in Cab to meet deaders

"Only Nightmares Last Forever"—Pinhead confronting Amy

"Fear Is Where We Go to Learn"—Amy and Marla at Train Yard

"My Psychotic Episode"—Amy and Charles

"The Final Step"—Amy in hall

"We Belong to It"—Pinhead berating Winter

"Sweetness of Suffering"—Crazy Cenobites

"Amy Walking to the Station"—One for the DP

Gag Reel (480i; 1.78:1, non-enhanced; 0:59): After this film, watching Doug Bradley
break character as Pinhead is a perfect antidote.

Location Scouting (480i; 1.78:1, non-enhanced; 11:32): In the "Making of" featurette,
Bota describes how he blocked key sequences using stand-ins and his video camera. This
extra places the edited video footage side-by-side with the finished film in separate
windows.

Making of Hellraiser: Deader (480i; 1.33:1; 17:09): This better-than-average
documentary is dominated by director Bota and star Wuhrer, but it also features
substantial footage shot on set and on location.

Hellraiser: Deader is neither fish nor fowl. It's not enough of a Hellraiser film to satisfy the
hardcore fans, and it has to make too many concessions to the Pinhead crowd to create a genre
picture with any semblance of integrity. It's a sad comment that such cut-rate material has
received so much care and attention from the talent involved and especially ironic that Echo
Bridge appears to have treated it better than more deserving titles I've recently reviewed. It's a
decent Blu-ray, but I can't recommend it.

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